Inside STAT: As DNA ancestry sites gather more data, consumers' results are shifting

(MOLLY FERGUSON FOR STAT)

Imagine going through life thinking you belong to one ethnic group only to learn otherwise. That was the story of 34-year-old Leonard Kim, who grew up believing he was 100% Korean, but a 23andMe test told him in 2016 he was almost half Japanese. The same test three years later told him he was now 5% Japanese. A similar story unfolded with product designer Peter Cho, who watched his test results yo-yo between telling him he was nearly 60% to 95% Korean. But puzzling as these changes may be, they are to be expected as companies like 23andMe constantly add more data to their genetic databases. And with more data — specifically more data from non-white populations — “even an incremental update can lead to pendular shifts for customers of color,” writes STAT’s Damian Garde. Read more here.